Hubert Zapf - Literary Ecology and the Ethics of Texts

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Literary Ecology and the Ethics of TextsAuthor(s): Hubert ZapfSource: New Literary History, Vol. 39, No. 4, Reexamining Literary Theories and Practices (

Autumn, 2008), pp. 847-868Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press

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2/23

Literary Ecology

and

the Ethics

of

Texts

Hubert

Zapf

I.

Ecology

and Ethics

Among

the

various

turns

in

recent

literary

and cultural

stud

ies,

the

ecological

turn

and

the ethical

turn

are

perhaps

the

most

conspicuous.

They

have both

opened

up

promising

new areas

of

transdisciplinary

inquiry

and

are,

in

many

ways,

at

the heart of

current

trends

in

the humanities.

In

my paper,

I

would like

to

look

more

closely

at

the

relationship

between

ecology

and

ethics,

with

particular

attention

to

the

ways

in which literature

and

literary

studies

can

contribute in

significant

ways

to

that

transdisciplinary

dialogue.

If

one

tried

to

point

out

some

of the

convergences

and

common

tendencies within

recent

ecology

and

ethics,

one

could

name

the fol

lowing: (1) Both of them newly focus on the relationship between text

and

life

that has been reduced

to

only

one

pole

in

the

pantextual

and

pansemiotic

universe

of

postmodernism.

(2)

Both of them

deal

not

only

with facts but with

values,

that

is,

with

a

critical attitude

to

a

given

state

of

things

and

with

the

necessity

to

think

beyond

it and

imagine

possible

alternatives.

(3)

For

both of

them,

the

relationship

between culture and

nature

and thus

between

the natural sciences and the

humanities

seems

to

have

special significance,

even

if

they

approach

this

relationship

from

different

angles.

(4)

Both of them share the

assumption

of

an

intercon

nection

between

local

and

global

issues and

are,

therefore,

transcultural

and

transnational

in

orientation.

At the

same

time,

it is

helpful

to

approach

any

such

transdisciplinary

dialogue

from

an awareness

not

only

of the

affinities,

but also of the

differences

and

indeed

the tensions between

the

disciplines

involved,

which

cannot

simply

be subsumed under each

other's

premises.

After

all,

ethics has been

that

discipline

within

traditional

Western

philoso

phy

in

which the

opposition

between

culture and

nature,

human and

nonhuman

life

provided

the foundational

terms

and

concepts.

Human

consciousness and

conscience,

the freedom of

the

will,

the

autonomy

of the subject, the moral

sense

of good and evil, the hierarchy of values

between

the

spiritual,

intellectual,

psychological,

and

physical

spheres

New

Literary History,

2009,

39:

847-868

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3/23

848

NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

have been characteristic axioms of ethical thinking from Aristotle to

Kant and into the

twentieth

century.

Ethics

appears,

therefore,

as

an

expression

of

precisely

that

logocentric

and

anthropocentric ideology

that

modern

ecological

thought

tries

to

overcome.

What

is

more,

ecology,

from its

origin

in

biology,

has been

an

empirical

descriptive

rather than

a

normative-philosophical

form

of

knowledge;

it

favors

a

collective and

objectifying

rather than

a

decision- and

subject

oriented

approach;

it

posits

an

ecocentric

instead of

an

anthropocentric

orientation;

it

assumes

the

priority

of

nature

over

culture

and,

by

ex

tension,

of

the

natural

sciences

over

the humanities.

Thus

the

bringing

together

of

scientific and humanist-culturalist versions of

ecology,

which

some

ecocritics

so

emphatically

advocate,

is

not

as

unproblematic

and

self-evident

as

it

may

seem.

Let

me

illustrate

this

point

by

briefly

discuss

ing

the

relationship

between

ecology

and

ethics

as

formulated

from

the

viewpoint

of the

natural sciences

by

Edward Wilson

in his

book

Consilience:

The

Unity of Knowledge

(1998).

II.

The

Unity

and

Diversity

of

Knowledge

Wilson

is

one

of the foremost scientists and

ecological

voices

in

the

world

today,

and

apart

from his

role

as

environmental

expert

and

public

representative

of

a

global

conservation

ethics,

his aim is

to

overcome

the

division of modern

knowledge

into

the

two

cultures

already deplored

in

the 1950s

by

C. P.

Snow,

and

to

achieve

a

new

unity

of

knowledge

on

the

basis of

interdisciplinary

work.

In his

book

Consilience,

Wilson

argues

for

a

concept

of

knowledge

that is

fundamentally

the

same

throughout

the

various

fields

of

science. Consilience is

not

synonymous

with

coherence

but

is

literally

a

'jumping together'

of

knowledge by

the

linking

of

facts

and fact-based

theory

across

disciplines

to

create

a common

groundwork

of

explanation. 1

While Wilson

in

his

earlier

Sociobiology

(1975)

had still

described ethics

as a

mere

strategic

function of selfish

genes

and

an

illusion fobbed

off

on us

by

our

genes

to

get

us

to

cooperate

(that

is,

in

the

all-governing biological

purpose

of

species

reproduction),2

he

provided

a more

productive

concept

for

connecting biological

ecology

with

ethical considerations

in

his books

Biophilia

(1984)

and

TheBiophilia

Hypothesis

(1993,

coedited with

Stephen

Kellert)

by

postulating

a

kind

of

inborn human love

of

life and

asserting

the

innately

emotional

affilia

tion of human beings to other living organisms. 3 In Consilience, Wilson

goes

one

step

further in

trying

to

establish

a

common

epistemological

ground

for

the various

forms of

human

knowledge,

including

environ

mental

policy

and

ethics. Wilson

assumes a

relationship

between natural

history

and

human

history

characterized

by

gene-culture

coevolution,



4/23

LITERARY ECOLOGY AND THE ETHICS

OF

TEXTS

849

according

to which culture has evolved in constant interaction with na

ture,

and,

though

accelerated

and

highly

diversified

in

its

processes,

is

governed essentially

by

analogous

laws. The basic

relations

among

the

great

branches

of

learning,

as

Wilson

calls

them,

are

expressed

in

the

following diagram

(

C

9)

:

environmental

policy

social

science

ethics

biology

To

indicate his intention of

bringing

these

areas

of

learning

closer

together, he draws a series of concentric circles around the point of

intersection

(C10):

environmental

policy

ethics

social

science

biology

Wilson

goes

on

to

say:

The

ring

closest

to

the

intersection,

where

most

real-world

problems

exist,

is

the

one

in

which fundamental

analysis

is

most

needed

(C

10).

In

this

model,

the various domains of human

knowledge are presumed to influence mutually and complement each

other,

with

biology,

however,

quite

clearly being

the foundational disci

pline.

If

one

reads the model

clockwise,

starting

with

biology,

one

could

construct

the

following

example

of consilience : On the

basis

of the

laws

of

nature

in

biology,

and of

their role

in

the

functioning

of human



5/23

850

NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

societies in terms of the

gene-culture-coevolution,

the

impact

of human

civilization

on

the earth under

the

conditions

of

a

global

free-market

economy

can

be studied

in

the social

sciences,

from

which

a

specific

environmental

policy

can

be

derived

that

is

based

on

the

ethic of

sus

tainable

development

(C289).

Nevertheless,

there

are

unresolved

problems

in

Wilson's

approach

that

cannot

be

solved

by

a

merely causal-empirical

concept

of

knowledge.

Wilson

is

right,

of

course,

when

he

argues

for

the

necessity

of sufficient

and

competent

information about

the

findings

of

the natural

sciences

for

any responsible

environmental

policy

and

contemporary

ethics. Yet

looking again

at

the

diagram

above,

one

might

first of all

ask whether

all

important

branches of

knowledge

are

adequately represented. Literary

culture,

for

one,

is

not

mentioned and

is

presumably simply

subsumed

under the

social

sciences,

even

though

it

probably

has

a

special potential

for the

r?int?gration

of different

areas

of cultural

knowledge

that

are

kept

separate

in

other forms of

discourse.4

Moreover,

Wilson identifies

real-world

problems

with

the

intersections

of

academic

disciplines,

all

of

which

are

clearly

marked

as

cultural

projects

and

practices.

The

principles

of

an

environmental ethics that

he

postulates

cannot

really

be based on and derived from facts and fact-based theory alone. The

need

to

think

globally requires

not

only empirical

information,

but

reflection

and

imagination,

a

capacity

and

readiness

to

think

beyond

oneself

and one's

own

immediate interests and

life-world

(C 10).

Even

though biophilia

may

be

considered

as

an

instinctual basis for

a

species

transcending

empathetic disposition

of

humans,

it

provides

no

sufficient

foundation

for

ethics.

Any

ethical

stance

involves

intellectual,

moral,

and

emotional decisions

by

the

individual

subject

as a

culturally

embedded

agent.

And

such decisions

are

neither

merely

conditioned

by objective

natural

laws,

genetic

dispositions,

or

cultural

contexts,

nor

do

they

take

place

in

an

ahistorical

vacuum

of

free

subjective

self-determination.

Instead,

they

are

mediated and

ultimately

made

possible

by

the

com

municative medium of

language

and of

texts.

The

dialogue

between

ecology

and

ethics,

and the

dialogue

between the

natural

sciences

and

cultural and

literary

studies,

is thus

not

possible

in

any

unmediated

way

but

requires

the

recognition

of

different

cultures

of knowledge,

which

are

interdependent

with but

cannot

be

reduced

to

each other.

Even

though

the

unity

of

knowledge

may

be

a

desirable

aim

and indeed

a

necessary

project

of

reconnecting

the

separate

branches of

contemporary

sci

ence, the ecological principle of evolutionary diversity should also be

recognized

for the different forms of

knowledge

as

they

have

evolved

historically,

both between

and

within

cultures.

If

science

has become the

master

discourse of

contemporary

knowl

edge,

other forms of

knowledge,

nevertheless,

continue

to

claim their



6/23

LITERARY

ECOLOGY

AND

THE

ETHICS OF TEXTS

851

own

unique, though by

no

means

totally separate

and

isolated

ways

of

exploring

and

interpreting

the

culture-nature

relationship.

In

this

sense,

I

would

like

to

focus

here

on

the

question

of

how

literary

and

textual

knowledge

can

specifically

contribute

to

illuminating

this

culture-nature

relationship

in

ways

that

are

different

yet

productive

to

the

more

general

ecology

and

ethics

debate.

III.

Ecology,

Cultural

Ecology, Literary

Ecology

As has been indicated at the outset, there have been

significant changes

in

both fields

in

the

past

few

decades

that

point

in

the

direction of such

a

nonreductive

transdisciplinary dialogue.

On the

one

hand,

ecology

has

branched

out

from

a

purely

biological

into

a

multidisciplinary project,

with

ramifications for

human

ecology,

for

psychological,

social, and,

more

recently,

cultural

ecology,

a

process

in which

former

deterministic

assumptions

about

the

culture-nature

relationship

gradually

have been

superseded by

more

complex

views of

interdependence-yet-difference.5

This is

especially

true

of the

relatively

new

branch of

cultural

ecology,

which considers the

sphere

of human culture

not

as

separate

from

but

as

interdependent

with

and transfused

by

ecological

processes

and

natural

energy

cycles.

At

the

same

time,

it

recognizes

the

relative

independence

and

self-reflexive

dynamics

of

cultural

processes.

Even

as

the

dependence

of culture

on nature

and the ineradicable

presence

of

nature

in

culture

gain

ever more

interdisciplinary

attention,

the

difference between

cultural

evolution

and natural evolution

is

increasingly

acknowledged

by

cultural

ecologists.

Rather than

genetic

laws,

information and

communication

have become

major driving

forces

of

cultural evolution.6

While causal deterministic

laws

are

therefore

not

applicable

in the

sphere of culture, there are nevertheless productive analogies that can

be drawn

between

ecological

and cultural

processes.

Gregory

Bateson

was

the first

to

draw such

analogies

in his

project

for

an

Ecology of

Mind

(1973),

which

was

based

on

general principles

of

complex,

dynamic

life

processes,

such

as

the

concept

of feedback

loops,

which he

saw

as

operating

both between the mind and the

world

and within the

mind

itself.

Foregrounded

in

this view

were

the

processual,

interactional,

and

self-reflexive

qualities

of

mental,

psychological,

and

communicational

phenomena.

Bateson's

methodological

move

opened

up

an

innovative,

new area

of research

in

which cultural

processes

could be

investigated

in their

structural coevolution with natural

processes,

while

at

the

same

time their irreducible

complexity, flexibility,

and

creativity

were

brought

out

in

even

greater

force.

In Peter

Finke's

wide-ranging,

transdisciplinary

project

for

an

evolution

ary

cultural

ecology,

Bateson's ideas

are

fused with

concepts

from

systems



7/23

852

NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

theory.7

The various sections and

subsystems

of

society

are described as

cultural

ecosystems

with their

own

processes

of

production,

reduction,

and

consumption

of

energy?involving

physical

as

well

as

psychic

energy.

This

also

applies

to

the cultural

ecosystems

of

art

and

of

literature,

which

follow

their

own

internal

forces

of selection and

self-renewal,

but

also

have

an

important

function within

the

cultural

system

as

a

whole.

From

the

perspective

of

this kind of cultural

ecology,

the internal

landscapes

produced

by

modern

culture and consciousness

are

equally important

for

human

beings

as

their external environments.

Human

beings

are,

as

it

were,

by

their

very

nature

not

only

instinctual but also cultural

beings.

Literature

and other

forms

of cultural

imagination

and cultural

creativity

are

necessary

in

this view

to restore

continually

the

richness,

diversity,

and

complexity

of

those inner

landscapes

of the

mind,

the

imagination,

the

emotions,

and

interpersonal

communication

that make

up

the

cultural

ecosystems

of modern

humans,

but

are

threatened

by impoverishment

from

an

increasingly

overeconomized, standardized,

and

depersonalized

contemporary

world.

Bateson's cultural

ecology

of the

mind

was

complemented

by

philoso

phers

such

as

Gernot

and

Hartmut

B?hme

by

a

cultural

ecology

of the

body,

which focused on the ways in which human

experiences

are ex

pressed

in

language

and

discourse

through

elemental

images, metaphors,

and

symbols

derived from

the

sensory

intimacy

of the

human

body's

exchange

and

interaction with

the

environment.8

The

linguistic

descrip

tion and textual

representation

of

mental

and

emotional

phenomena

has

to

rely

on

concrete

bodily perceptions

and

experiences

of

being

in

the

world

(hot/cold,

hard/soft,

fluid/solid,

dark/light, painful/pleasant,

and

so

forth),

which

in

turn

are

based

on

elemental forces and

cycles

of

nature

(the

seasons,

the

elements of

fire,

water,

earth,

air).9

Gernot

B?hme has

developed

this

approach

into what

he

calls

an

ecological

aesthetics of

nature,

which

at

the

same

time has

an

ethical dimension

in

the

revaluation of

the

body

and

of

bodily perception

and emotion

as

opposed

to

the dominant

rationalistic,

utilitarian

program

of

moderniza

tion that

marginalizes

such values

and

experiences.

Viewed

in this

context,

literature itself

appears

as

the

symbolic

medium

of

a

particularly

powerful

form

of

cultural

ecology

in

the

sense

that

it

has

staged

and

explored,

in

ever

new

scenarios,

the

complex

feedback

relationship

of

prevailing

cultural

systems

with

the needs

and

manifes

tations

of

human

and

nonhuman

nature,

and

from this

paradoxical

act of creative regression has drawn its specific power of innovation and

cultural

self-renewal.10

Literature

in this

view

acts

like

an

ecological

force

within

language

and the

larger

system

of

cultural

discourses,

transform

ing

logocentric

structures

into

energetic

processes,

and

opening

up

the

logical

space

of linear

conceptual thought

into

the

ecological

space



8/23

LITERARY

ECOLOGY

AND THE ETHICS OF TEXTS

853

of nonlinear

complex

feedback

relationships.11

This function, as has

been

seen,

implicitly

involves

an

ecological

ethics

as

well

since

it

posits

the interconnectedness of mind and

body,

text

and

life,

man

and

the

nonhuman

world

as a

necessary

context

of human

responsibility,

which

in

its

fundamental

dialogical

rather than

monological

orientation

is

relevant

in

the

spheres

of

general

culture

and

science

as

well.12

Ecology,

and

especially

cultural

ecology,

has thus

evolved

in

recent

decades

in

such

a

way

that

it

has

become

a

particularly promising

and

innovative field

of

interdisciplinary

literary

and cultural

studies.

IV.

Ethics,

Ecology,

and Literature

At

the

same

time,

there have been

equally

significant

shifts within

recent

ethical

theory,

which

have

brought

it

closer

to

ecology.

There

seems

to

be

a

symmetrical dynamics

at

work here:

while

ecology

is

developing

a

new

awareness

of

culture,

ethics is

developing

a

new awareness

of

nature.

Moreover,

it is

interesting

to

observe that the

opening

of

traditional eth

ics

to

ecological

issues

seems

to

go

hand

in hand

with

a

shift of

focus

from the

paradigm

of

philosophy

to the

paradigm

of literature in recent

discussions

of

ethics.

The

new

attention

to

ethical

questions

in

literary

studies coincides with

a

new

attention

to

literary

texts

in

contemporary

discussions

of

ethics.

In

these

recent

debates,

the

following

points

have found

special

atten

tion:

(1)

the

ways

in

which the

narrative

mode is

necessary

to

provide

a

medium for the

concrete

exemplification

of

ethical

issues that

cannot

adequately

be

explored

on

a

merely

systematic-theoretical

level;

(2)

the

ways

in

which

literature,

as a

form of

knowledge

that is

always

mediated

through

personal perspectives,

reflects the

indissoluble

connection

between ethics and the human

subject,

a

subject,

however,

not

under

stood

as a mere

cognitive

ego

but

a

concrete,

bodily

self

implicated

in

multiple interrelationships;

(3)

the

ways

in

which the

imaginative

staging

of

other

lives in

fictional

texts

provides

a

forum for the

enactment

of

the

dialogical interdependence

between

self

and

other,

and

beyond

that

of

the

irreducible difference

and

alterity

of the other

which

is

central

to

ethics; and,

(4)

the

ways

in

which literature

and

art

are

not

merely

illustrations

of

moral

ideologies

but also

symbolic

representations

of

complex dynamical

life

processes,

whose

ethical force consists

precisely

of their resistance to easy interpretation and appropriation.

As

theorists such

as

J.

Hillis

Miller,

Paul

Ricoeur,

and

Martha Nussbaum

have

pointed

out

in

their different

ways,

ethical issues

seem

to

require

the

fictional

mode

of

narrative,

because

the ethical

is

a

category

that

resists

abstract

systematization

and needs instead

concrete

exemplification

of



9/23

854

NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

lived

experience

in the form of stories, which allow for the imaginative

transcendence

of

the individual self toward

other

selves.13

Ethics,

in

this

sense,

is

not

the

same as

morality;

on

the

contrary,

it involves

precisely

a

critique

of

moral

systems

as

far

as

they

imply

fixed,

conventionalized,

and

impersonal

rules of

thought

and

behavior.

On

the other

hand,

and

for

this

very

reason,

an

ethics of

literature

also

involves

a

resistance

to

moralistic

storytelling,

which

would subsume the other under one's

own

categories,

and

instead

requires

a

new

ethical

sense, 14

an awareness

of

the

potential

violence of

even

well-intentioned

acts

of

understanding

the

other.

In

the

German-speaking

world,

Edgar

Platen and Mathias

Mayer

have worked

in

this

direction

of

linking

the

narrative,

fictionalizing,

and

metaphorical

power

of

texts to

their

ethical

potential.

Mayer

speaks

of

an

ethics

of textual

cultures,

in

which both the

textual mediatedness

and

the

plurality

of

ethical

approaches

to

the

contemporary

world

are

expressed

and

in

which

the aesthetic mode

provides

a

specific

means

of

communicating

ethical issues

in

such

a

way

that it

simultaneously

resists conventional

moralizing.15

The

awareness

and

recognition

of the

alterity

of the

other

can

be

seen

as

an

essential characteristic of the

re

cent

discourse

of

ethics,

and

narrative

seems

to

be

a

form

in

which

this

discourse can find a

specifically

instructive, because

complex,

medium

of

(self-)

exploration.16

These

tendencies

within

ethical

theory

have

challenged

and radi

cally

transformed

the

universalist,

subject-centered,

and

exclusionary

anthropocentric

bias of traditional ethics. Instead

of unified

systems

of

knowledge

and

belief,

plurality, diversity,

and

dialogicity

have been

foregrounded

as new

ethical

orientations.17

In

what

has

perhaps

been the

most

influential version of

recent

ethics,

Emmanuel

L?vinas

radicalized

traditional

ethics

into

an

existential

dialogical

process

in which

the

obliga

tion

toward

the other becomes

the

highest

possible

value that

manifests

itself

only

in

moments

of

concrete

face-to-face

encounters.

More

than

ever

before,

this ethical

reorientation

includes

ecological

issues.

This

is also

true

of

leading

philosophers

of

postmodernism

whose

writings

had

long

been

interpreted

as

purely

self-referential

theories of

culture.

Jean-Fran?ois

Lyotard's critique

of

totalizing

assumptions

and

coercive

grand

narratives

already

contains such references when he

links

up

this

critique

with

a

form

of

ecology,

which

aims

at

discursively

empowering

the

concrete,

manifold forms

of human life

that

are

overshadowed

or

even

silenced

by

those dominant

grand

narratives.

Ecology,

to

Lyotard,

is the discourse of the secluded, and this ecological dimension of

discourse is

a

kind of

para-

or

counterdiscursive

power

that he locates

in

language,

the

text,

and,

indeed,

in

literature.18

In

the later

Jacques

Derrida,

the

critique

of

logocentrism

comes to

involve

a

critique

of

an

thropocentrism

as

well,

and the

attempt

of

deconstruction

to

include



10/23

LITERARY ECOLOGY AND

THE

ETHICS

OF

TEXTS

855

the excluded in its discourse is

explicitly

extended to the nonhuman,

animal

world,

notably

in his 1999

essay,

L'animal

que

donc

je

suis

(?

suivre)

(translated

in

2002

as

The Animal That

Therefore

I

am

[More

to

Follow] ),

where

Derrida,

as

he

says,

moves

from 'the ends of

man,'

that

is

the

confines of

man,

to

'the

crossing

of

borders'

between

man

and

animal. 19

To think and

speak

in

such

a

nonanthropocentric

way,

according

to

Derrida,

becomes

possible

less

in

a

philosophical

than

in

a

literary

mode

because

the

latter offers the

possibility

of

opening

the

text

to

the

perspective

of

the animal while

remaining

aware

of

its

incommensurability.20

For

thinking concerning

the

animal,

if

there

is

such

a

thing,

derives

from

poetry.

There

you

have

a

thesis: it is

what

philosophy

has,

essentially,

had

to

deprive

itself of.

It

is

the difference

between

philosophical

knowledge

and

poetic thinking. 21

This

fusion of

ethics,

ecology,

and

literature

as

transdisciplinary

frames

of the humanities

increasingly

has become

a

focus of

contemporary

contributions

to

this debate. Thus

Serenella

Iovino's

ecological

rethink

ing

of

philosophical

ethics leads

her

to

formulate

a

position

in

which

philosophy

combines

its

systemic,

conceptual approach

with the

imagina

tive

potential

of literature

in

a

new

ethical

stance

of

what

Iovino

calls

a

non-anthropocentric

humanism. 22 Thomas Claviez,

taking

up L?vinas's

ideas,

has demonstrated how L?vinas's ethics of radical

otherness

can

be extended

to

include the nonhuman world and

thereby

contribute

to

an

ecologically inspired

ethics. Claviez

points

out

the

special

power

of

literature and the aesthetic

in

representing

this

ecological

ethics. Com

bining

Lyotard

and

L?vinas,

Claviez

sees

the aesthetic mode in

which

this ethics of the

unrepresentable

other

can

be

realized

in

literary

texts,

in

a

particular

mode of the

sublime,

an

undomesticated sublime

...

in

which

the

traces

of

obligation, irreciprocity,

and

the

disintegration

of

the self

are

kept

alive. 23

It is in

such

contributions

that

the

intersections

between

the

recent

discourses

of

ethics and of

ecology

become

especially

apparent

and

in which the

paradigm

of

textual

and

literary knowledge

emerges

as an

important

medium and

connecting

frame for the

dialogue

between

these

discourses.

IV.

Literary

Ecology

and the Ethics

of

Texts:

The

Example

of

Emily

Dickinson

In Lawrence Buell's influential book on literary ecology, The Environ

mental

Imagination,

he

proposes

the

following

criteria

for

a

definition

of

what constitutes

an

environmental

text:

1. The nonhuman environment

is

present

not

merely

as

a

framing

device but

as a

presence

that

begins

to

suggest

that human

history

is

implicated

in

natural

history.

2.

The



11/23

856

NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

human interest is not understood to be the only legitimate interest. 3.

Human

accountability

to

the

environment

is

part

of

the

text's

ethical

orientation. 4.

Some

sense

of the

environment

as

a

process

rather than

as

a

constant

or

a

given

is

at

least

implicit

in

the text. 24

Let

me

juxtapose

these criteria

with three

texts

by

an

author

who,

at

first

sight,

hardly

comes to

mind

when

one

thinks

of

environmental litera

ture

but rather

is

known

for

her

highly

self-reflexive,

language-conscious,

formally

innovative,

and

experimental

poetry?Emily

Dickinson.25

668

Nature

is

what

we see

-

The Hill

-

the Afternoon

-

Squirrel

-

Eclipse

-

the

Bumble bee

-

Nay

-

Nature

is

Heaven

-

Nature is what

we

hear

-

The Bobolink

-

the

Sea

-

Thunder

-

the Cricket

-

Nay

-

Nature is

Harmony

-

Nature is

what

we

know

-

Yet have

no art

to

say

-

So impotent Our Wisdom is

To her

Simplicity

(515)

986

A

narrow

Fellow

in the

Grass

Occasionally

rides

-

You

may

have

met

Him

-

did

you

not

His

notice sudden

is

-

The Grass

divides

as

with

a

Comb

-

A

spotted

shaft

is

seen

-

And

then

it

closes

at

your

feet

And

opens

further

on

-

He

likes

a

Boggy

Acre

A

floor

too

cool for Corn

-

\fet when

a

Boy,

and

Barefoot

-

I

more

than

once

at

Noon

Have

passed,

I

thought,

a

Whip

lash

Unbraiding

in the Sun

When

stopping

to

secure

it

It

wrinkled,

and

was

gone

-

Several of

Nature's

People

I

know,

and

they

know

me

-



12/23

LITERARY

ECOLOGY

AND THE

ETHICS OF

TEXTS

857

I feel for them a

transport

Of

cordiality

-

But

never met

this

Fellow

Attended,

or

alone

Without

a

tighter breathing

And Zero

at

the Bone

-

(711)

1068

Further in Summer than the Birds

Pathetic

from

the Grass

A minor Nation celebrates

Its

unobtrusive

Mass.

No

Ordinance be

seen

So

gradual

the Grace

A

pensive

Custom

it

becomes

Enlarging

Loneliness.

Antiquest

felt

at

Noon

When

August

burning

low

Arise

this

spectral

Canticle

Repose

to

typify

Remit

as

yet

no

Grace

No Furrow

on

the Glow

Yet

a

Druidic Difference

Enhances Nature

now

(752)

If

we

first of

all look

in

these

poems

for

Buell's

criteria

for

an

envi

ronmental

text,

we

find

some

surprising correspondences.

In

the

first

poem,

manifold

phenomena

of nonhuman

nature

from

small

to

large,

from

the

banal

to

the

sublime,

are

brought

together

as

shaping

forces

of the

speaker's

concrete

environment

in

an

attempt

at

making

them

commensurate

with human

perception, language,

and

understanding,

an

attempt

that ends

in

a

gesture

of

failure

and

an awareness

of the limits

of conscious

versus

unconscious

forms

of

knowledge.

In

the

second,

the

snake is

presented

both

as a

closely

observed

phenomenon

of

everyday

experience and as an independent, fascinating, yet uncanny presence that

seems

strongly

intertwined

with

the

speaker's

biography

and innermost

life,

but which

again

eludes

her

anthropocentric

control.

In

the

third,

the

hum of crickets

in

the

August

sun

is

the focus

of

attention of

an

observing

consciousness

that

almost

seems

to

merge

into

the

observed

microworld



13/23

858

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

of nature, which is

perceived

in the

imagery

of an ancient,

highly

ritual

ized

culture.

In

all three

poems,

then,

the

nonhuman

environment is

a

presence

in its

own

right,

is

closely

interconnected

with

human

life,

and

even

if

they

contain

no

explicit

ecocentric

ethic,

something

like

an

ecoethical attitude

of coevolution

and

partnership

between

the

human

and the nonhuman world

is

clearly recognizable?for example,

in the

staging

of

nature

as

an

enigmatic

source

of

knowledge

in

668,

in the

personification

of

the snake

as

narrow

Fellow,

and of other

animals,

as

Nature's

People

in

986,

or

in the

anthropomorphic presentation

of

crickets

as

agents

of

a

sacred

magic

ritual.

At

the

same

time,

it is also clear

that,

even

if the

referential

content

seems

to

be

more

easily

identifiable here than

in

some

of

Dickinson's

other

poems,

they

are

nevertheless

not

cases

of realistic

nature

writing;

on

the

contrary,

their

ecological

quality

results

precisely

from

their

semantic

indeterminacy

and from their

metaphoric,

narrative,

and

aes

thetic dimensions.

Let

us

look

more

closely

at

the

example

of

the

snake

poem.

The

referential

content

seems

obvious

enough?it

is the

presence

of

a

snake

as

a

special

creature

in

a

certain natural

environment. The

grass,

a

boggy

acre,

cool,

and

unfit

for human

cultivation,

is

mentioned

as the snake's habitat,

along

with the

personal

encounter of the child

with

this

creature,

which

continues

to

exert

its

shock-like,

at

once

fas

cinating

and

paralyzing

effect

on

the

adult

speaker.

But,

of

course,

the

text

only begins

to

unfold

its

rich

semantic

potential

when

we

look

at

the

ways

in

which this

primary experience

is

conveyed.

The

poem

lives

from the

strangeness

of the

familiar?a fellow

is

someone

with whom

one

shares

a

familiar

code

and

life-world,

and

yet

this

particular

fellow

is

also characterized

by

strangeness,

by

the

unexpected

and

unpredictable,

by

breaking

out

of

habitual

patterns

of

feeling,

behavior,

and

percep

tion. What is

conveyed

here, therefore,

is the vital

interconnection of

the human

subject

with

a

symbolic

life

force that

is

nevertheless

unavail

able,

with

an

other that

is

radically

alien

yet

also

affects the innermost

core

of

the self.

What

the

poem

thus

unfolds

in its

formal

composition

and its interfusion

of

metaphor

and

narrative is

an

uncanny

dialectic

of

familiarity

and

strangeness,

of

the visible and the

invisible

(second

stanza),

of

presence

and absence

(third

stanza),

of

communication and

isolation,

of life and death

(third

and

fourth

stanzas)

as

basic forms

of

being

in

the world. The

snake,

as

Wilson

mentions,

is

one

of

the

most

frequently recurring archetypes

of the

human

imagination,

occurring

inWestern and non-Western literature alike throughout the ages as a

powerful image

of

danger

inspiring

both

fear

and

fascination.26

This

is

one

level

of

significance

for

interpreting

Dickinson's

text,

on

which the

interconnection

between

an

evolutionary-biological

and

a

literary

form

of

knowledge

becomes

apparent.



14/23

LITERARY

ECOLOGY

AND

THE

ETHICS

OF

TEXTS

859

Beyond

this

archetypal,

transhistorical level, however, the snake also

has

special

significance

within the

context

of

American culture. On

this

level,

it

represents

a

counterforce

to

the

pastoral interpretation

of America

as

a

new

garden

of

Eden,

a

colonial

project

in

which the

presence

of

the alien

and unavailable

is

already

implicated

in

its

very

conception

of

order,

mastery,

and control

over

the human and

nonhuman

world,

as

American literature

again

and

again

illustrates. The

image

in

which the

boy

at

first

perceives

the

snake,

the

whip

lash,

is

a

sign

of

this cultural

illusion of

mastery

and control

over a

brightly

visible,

passive

and

literally

graspable

nature,

which,

however,

at

the

attempt

of

securing

it

turns

into

something ungraspable,

active,

shape-changing,

and absent? It

wrinkled

and

was

gone.

The

whip

as

an

icon

of

master-slave

relations,

of

dominance and

domestication,

which

in

the

context

of mid-nineteenth

century

America has additional

overtones,

is

transformed here into

a

subversive

counterforce,

and

it is

no

accident

that the third

stanza,

which relates this

uncanny

encounter,

breaks

out

of

and

overthrows the

regular

pattern

of

the

poem,

comprising

not

as

the other

stanzas

just

four but

eight

lines.

Also,

in this third

stanza,

we

have

a

further alienat

ing

effect in that the

identity

of the human

subject,

too,

breaks

out

of

conventional

patterns

such as

gender

roles when Dickinson's

poetic

self

surprises

the reader

by

turning

herself

into

a

boy,

thereby

imaginatively

changing

her

place

and

perspective

on

life,

in

fact

participating

in

the

shape-changing

process

and resistance

to

any

fixed notion of

knowledge

and

identity

that the

poem

enacts.

Yet

even

the attitude

of what could

be described

as

biophilic mutuality

between human and nonhuman

nature

in

stanza

four,

and which

corresponds

in

quite

an

exemplary

way

to

an

ecological

ethics,

finds its

counterpoint

in

the fifth

stanza

in

the

biophobic,

paralyzing

experience

of

potential

threat

and

annihilation.27

The

/z/

or

/s/ sound,

which

occurs

irregularly throughout

and

appears

once more

in

the Zero

at

the bone

at

the

poem's

end,

signifies

the

negative

climax of

a

series of

unexpected changes

that

run as

if

in

ir

regular serpentine

waves

through

the

text,

making

the snake

not

only

the

theme but

a

shaping image

of

the text's

semiotic

movement.

Thus the

poem

lives both

from its

relational,

dialogical

ethos and from

its internal tensions

and

contradictions.

The narrative that is

necessary

for

conveying

the text's ecoethical

attitude

of

biophilia

encounters

an

other which

resists narrative

representation.

And

the

comforting reciproc

ity

of the human-nonhuman

relationship

as

it

appears

in

stanza

four

is

confronted with the experience of irreciprocity that Claviez, applying

L?vinas's ethics

of the other

to

the

nonhuman

world,

considers crucial

for

an

ecological

ethics.28

As Rebecca

Raglon

and

Marian

Scholtmeijer

have

pointed

out

in their

essay

on

Nature's

Resistance

to

Narrative,

the

best

literary

texts

about

nature

are

those

that have sensed

the

power

of



15/23

860

NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

nature to resist, or

question,

or evade the

meanings

we

attempt

to

impose

on

the natural

world. 29

Dickinson's

poems

clearly

are

examples

of this

resistance?not

only,

as

has been

seen,

in

the snake

poem

but in the

repeated,

futile

attempt

at

a

definition of

nature

in

number

668,

which

results

in

a

stammering

series

of

intertwined

assertions

and

negations,

or

in the Druidic

Difference,

which remains

as

an

open

enigmatic

signifier

at

the end

of the cricket

poem.

Dickinson's

poems

are

examples

here of

a more

general

function of

literature,

which

is

a

self-reflexive

form

of

knowledge staging

complex

life

processes

at

the

boundary

line of

the

culture-nature

interaction. It is

a

form

of

cultural

ecology

in

which

the

discourses available

in the

cultural

world

are

confronted with

their

prediscursive

or

transdiscursive

other,

which

is

made

symbolically

accessible

through

the

narrative,

metaphoric,

and aesthetic

power

of

texts.

Dickinson,

as

every

great

writer,

is

unique

but

by

no means

untypical

in

this

respect.

From

her

own

time,

Henry

David

Thoreau

or

Walt Whitman would

certainly

be

prime

examples,

and,

indeed,

much of the best American

poetry

in

the

twentieth

century,

too,

can

be

interpreted

from

this

angle.30

With

remarkable

intensity,

poets

have focused

on

the

boundary

of the culture-nature

relationship

as a source of their

poetic creativity

and as the textual site where eco

logical

concerns

and

the

ethical self-reflection of

the

human

species

are

brought

together.

VI. The Local and the Global:

Some Recent American Novels

In Buell's and other versions of

ecocriticism,

the

focus of

literary

ecol

ogy

has been

very

much

on

the

concept

of

place,

for

example,

on

the

regional

and

the local

as

the

real material basis of the

interaction

between

humans

and their

environment

as

it is reflected in the

text.

Indeed,

the

concept

of

place

has been

one

of

the

most

emphatically

propagated

categories

of

ecocriticism,

with

which

it

tried

to

counteract

anthropo

centric

abstractions and the

alienating

forces

of

a

purely

economic form

of

globalization

that

was

indifferent

to

the

concrete

ecosystems

of

par

ticular

places

and

regions.

With

the

shift

from such

a

regional-realist

to

a

cultural-ecological

concept

of

the

text

and of

the

literary imagination,

however,

and

particularly

in

the

context

of

its

dialogue

with

recent

ethics,

the relationship between the local and the global in texts appears in a

somewhat different

light.

Ursula

Heise,

for

one,

has

persuasively argued

that

ecocriticism's

narrow

focus

on

place

is

problematic

and one-sided

and

needs

to

be

complemented

by

and extended into

an

environmental

imagination

of

the

global. 31

On

the

one

hand,

the

ecological

axiom

that



16/23

LITERARY ECOLOGY AND

THE

ETHICS

OF

TEXTS

861

everything

is connected to

everything

else makes a

global

perspective

mandatory

in

a

sufficiently complex

interpretation

of

any

phenomenon

in the modern

life-world.32

In

a

parallel

evolution of ethical

theory

in

the twentieth

century,

a

local,

ethnocentric

ethics

has

been

expanded

toward

a

transnational,

global

ethics.

Literary

aesthetics

and

storytelling,

in

particular,

live from

the double

impulse

and the

productive

tension

of

regionalization

anduniversalization,

from the

exploration

of

concrete

life

in

the local here and

now,

on

the

one

hand,

and the

transgression

of

all internal and

external boundaries

toward

a

potentially

worldwide

significance

and

audience,

on

the other.

In

the

poetry

of

Dickinson and

of the other American writers

mentioned

above,

their attention

to

phe

nomena

of

local

nature

and their ecoethical attitude of

biophilia

implicitly

include

and

metonymically

extend

to

all forms of life

on

earth.

This interconnection

becomes

even

more

conspicuous

when

we

move

from the

literary

microform of

poetry

to

the

narrative

macroform

of

the novel.

The

three

novels

I

will discuss here

are

taken

from

recent

American

literature,

and

they

illustrate the

interdependence

of

the

lo

cal and

the

global

as an

ecoethical focus of

contemporary

literature.

All

three

of

them

deal

with

the

worldwide

impact

of

military

technology

in

its most destructive form, the nuclear bomb, and with its

implications

for and effect

on

local

natures

and

personal

life-worlds. Leslie Marmon

Silko's

Ceremony

(1977)

is

set

in the

historical

context

of

World

War II

and blends traditional and modern

polyphonic

narration in forms which

are

unique

yet

also

characteristic

of

much

of

postcolonial writing

within

and

beyond

North

America. The

novel

tells

the

story

of

the homecom

ing

of

the

protagonist Tayo,

who has been traumatized

by

the

war

and

feels

responsible

for

a

drought

that

has haunted

his

tribal homeland

since

he

killed

a

Japanese

enemy

who

looked

exactly

like

his uncle.

In

this Native American version

of

magical

realism,

the

opposition

between

Americans and their

Japanese

enemies is

dissolved

from

a

transcultural

perspective,

and the

exploitation

of

local

nature

in

the uranium mines

of

New

Mexico is

connected with the destructive

power

of

modern tech

nology

in the

shape

of the atomic

bomb. This

monstrous

aberration of

modern civilization

can

only

be

symbolically

healed,

in the

mythopoetic

logic

of the

text,

by

the

revival

of

ancient

Native American

rituals,

among

them,

first and

foremost,

the ritual and

ceremony

of

storytelling

itself.

Tayo

can

heal

himself,

his

land,

and his

community only by enacting

a

regenerative

ceremony

that leads

him

to

the

place

where

the

ethical

and ecological catastrophe of his experiences began: He walked to the

mine shaft

slowly,

and the

feeling

became

overwhelming:

the

pattern

of

the

ceremony

was

completed

there. He

knelt and

found

an

ore

rock.

The

gray

stone

was

streaked

with

powdery

yellow

uranium,

bright

and

alive

as

pollen;

veins

of

sooty

black

formed

lines

with

the

yellow, making



17/23

862

NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

mountain

ranges

and rivers across the stone. But

they

had taken these

beautiful rocks

from

deep

within the earth and

they

had laid them in

a

monstrous

design, realizing

destruction

on a

scale

only

they

could have

dreamed. 33

What

is

emphasized

in

the rich and

conflicting imagery

of this

descrip

tion is

the liveliness

of this

apparently

dead

piece

of

rock

excavated

from

deep

within

the desert earth. There

are

contrasts

on

this rock

be

tween

light

and dark

colors,

regular

and

irregular

forms,

a

microworld

corresponding

to

the forms of

mountains, rivers,

veins,

and

living

organ

isms

in the

larger ecosystem.

Local

nature

and

global responsibility

are

clearly

connected

here

since the lack

of

respect

for

the

one,

as

the

novel

shows,

ultimately

leads

to

unforeseeable

consequences

for the world

as a

whole.

This notion of

ecological

and ethical

interconnectedness

is

presented

here within

a

magical

ritual

worldview

and

a

deliberately

premodern,

shamanistic

form

of

storytelling

in

which Silko's second

self,

spider

woman,

fabricates and

weaves

the

world

of

the

text

and

the

text

of

the

world

from her

own

imagination.

Yet it is

simultaneously

presented

with

specific

reference

to

the historical conditions and

catastrophes

of

the modern world

and

has, therefore,

potentially

global

contemporary

significance.

Don

DeLillo's

Underworld

(1997)

examines the

global

implications

of

nuclear

power

in

an

age

of

computer

and

information

technology,

and

particularly

of

nuclear and other

civilizational

waste.

The threat

of

nuclear

war

that overshadowed

the

period

of

the cold

war

is

like

a

death-in-life

motif that

runs

through

the

text

and is

emphasized

in the intermedial

reference

to

Pie

ter

Breugel's

painting

The

Triumph

of

Death.

The

fantasies

of

power

manifested in the atomic bomb

not

only produced

reductive

binary

worldviews,

but also

a

growing

amount

of

military

and

technologi

cal

waste.

Indeed,

the real and

symbolic

wastelands

of

civilization that

the

novel

describes

seem

to

have moved

out

of F. Scott

Fitzgerald's

val

ley

of

ashes

and

to

have

become

an

omnipresent

symptom

of modern

society's

social and

ecological

underside,

of

its

underworld

in

many

different

senses.

The

text

of Underworld

is

organized

on

the

principle

that

everything

is

connected,

which

corresponds

to

the

growing

inter

dependence

and interconnection

of

public

events

and

private

lives

in

a

virtual

space

of

globalized

information

circuits. At the

same

time,

the

radically

nonlinear

and

fragmented

form of

narration reflects

the

chaotic

arbitrariness

of the

waste

that

is

the

novel's

theme?historical,

social,

personal, commercial, technological waste. From this double perspective,

the

interconnections

of

global

processes

and

events

with

local

places

and

personal

forms of

experience

are

explored.

This is

highlighted

in

the

land

art/was

te art

project

of Klara

Sax,

the central

artist

figure

in

the

novel,

who

paints

nuclear

warplanes

that had

been

circling

the

globe



18/23

LITERARY ECOLOGY AND THE

ETHICS

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TEXTS

863

during the years of the cold war and are now deposited as waste in the

Arizona

desert,

thereby foregrounding

the tension

and interaction of

this

technological

war

machinery

with

the

concrete

individuality

of the

artists

and with the local natural environment.

See,

we are

painting,

hand-painting

in

some

cases,

putting

our

puny

hands

to

great

weapons

systems,

to

systems

that

came

out

of the

factories and

assembly

halls

as

near

alike

as

possible,

millions of

components

stamped

out,

repeated

endlessly,

and we're

trying

to

unrepeat,

to

find

an

element

of felt

life. 54

To

Nick

Shay,

the

narrator,

who

views

the

project

from

a

plane,

it

conveys

the

following experience:

The

painted

aircraft

took

on

sunlight

and

pulse.

.. .

The air

was

color-scrubbed,

coppers

and

ochers

burning

off

the metal

skin

of the

aircraft

to

exchange

with

the

framing

desert.

But

these

colors

did

not

simply

draw down

power

from the

sky

or

lift

it

from the

landforms around

us.

They

pushed

and

pulled. They

were

in

conflict with

each

other,

to

be

read

emotionally,

skin

pigments

and industrial

grays

and

a

rampant

red

appearing repeatedly through

the

piece?the

red of

something

released,

a

burst

sac,

all

blood-pus

thickness

and

runny

underyellow.

And the other

planes,

decolored,

still

wearing spooky

fabric

over

the

windscreen

panels

and

engines,

dead-souled,

waiting

to

be

primed.35

Clearly,

art

here

becomes

a

force of

returning

life

to

a

death

culture

symbolized

by

the

planes

and their cold

war

past.

The

apparently

dead

material

is

transformed into

a

living

energy

field in

which

the

exchange

between

technological

civilization

and the natural

environment becomes

the

focus of aesthetic

experience.

In

an

excessive

imagery

of

wildness,

color, conflict,

sickness,

and the

grotesque,

the

artistic

transformation of

the

waste

products

of

a

life-threatening

technology

is

staged

as

a mon

strous

form of

birth. Klara

Sax's

project

is

an

intermedial

representation

of that

postmodern

waste

art

which characterizes DeLillo's novel

as a

whole.

The

transforming

power

of

art

that

reconnects

culture

to

nature,

civilizational

structures

to

vital

energies

of

life,

is

an

ecological

force

within

culture

which

simultaneously

acts

as

an

ethical

force of

cultural

criticism and self-renewal.

Finally,

Jewish-American

writer

Marc

Estrin's Insect Dreams

(2002)

is

a

political

novel

in

which

Gregor

Samsa from Franz Kafka's

Metamorphosis,

who

has

turned into

a

human-sized

cockroach,

does

not

die

as

in

Kafka's

story

but

survives

and,

separated

from his

family,

lives

on

as a

half-human,

half-animal

being.

By

this

double

identity,

he has intimate

knowledge

of

both cultural and natural phenomena and is, therefore, an exemplary

narrative medium

for

a

cultural-ecological diagnosis

of modern civiliza

tion.

After

some

years

as an

exhibit

in

a

freak

show

in

Vienna,

Gregor

escapes

the

rising

threat

of anti-Semitism and

emigrates

to

America in

the

1920s,

where,

from humble

beginnings

as

a

liftboy,

he

rapidly

moves



19/23

864

NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

up

the social ladder and, in the 1930s, becomes a member of Franklin

D.

Roosevelt's

kitchen cabinet

and

advisor

of the

president.

Because

of

his

competence

as

a

risk

manager,

he is

engaged

to

collaborate

on

the

Manhattan

Project,

the

project

that

developed

the

atomic

bomb in

response

to

Einstein's

warning

that

Nazi

Germany

was

working

toward

this

goal. Gregor

moves to

Los

Alamos and

initially

participates

in

the

project,

but distances

himself from

it

when it

is

continued

even

though

the

Germans have

abandoned

their

nuclear

plans.

In his double

perspective

as

outsider and

insider,

in

his

exceptional

intellectual

talents and

in

his

equally exceptional

ecoethical

sensibility symbolized by

his

never-healing

wound,

this human-animal

hybrid

comes

to

represent

an

unsuccessful

but

eloquent

and

highly

moving

oppositional

voice

to

the

preparations

for

the nuclear bomb.

For

his

views,

he enlists

the

support

of the

major

cultural achievements

in

world

history

in the

fields of

philosophy,

litera

ture,

music,

and

science,

which

are

interspersed

with

a

wealth of

histori

cal

material

and

with

detailed

descriptions

of

social

milieus

and natural

environments,

turning

his narrative into

a

powerful

counterdiscourse

to

the actual

military

and

political developments

of the

era.

In its fusion of

history

and

fiction,

serious

philosophical

reflection

and

playful

bricolage, political satire and deeply felt

sympathy

with all

living beings,

the novel

assumes

a

consciously

unstable

shifting

tone

from

which

the

contradictory developments

of Western civilization

in

the first

half

of the

twentieth

century,

between

the forces of democratization

and

dehumanization,

are

traced.

In

a

truly

cosmopolitan

manner,

the

novel

incorporates

all

sorts

of different

sources,

modes,

and

genres.

It

not

only

fuses scientific and

literary

culture,

but

also makes reference

to texts

and artifacts

from

Western

and

non-Western cultures

alike,

particularly

to

Japanese

culture

as

the culture

of

the enemies

against

whom

the

bombs

are

to

be used. At the end

of the

novel,

the

plot

escalates

to

its

grotesque

fantastic climax

when

a

nuclear

test

is

conducted

in

Alamog

ordo,

New

Mexico,

on

July

16, 1945,

a

few

days

before the

dropping

of

the bombs

on

Hiroshima and

Nagasaki.

Gregor,

who feels

helpless against

the

inexorable

course

of

events,

performs

a

final,

self-sacrificing

act

of

protest

by hiding

at

the

explosion

site and

letting

himself

be

blown

up

with the

bomb. The

concrete

locality

of the

test

site

in

the

Jornada

del

Muerto desert becomes the focal

point

of

a

global

message

of

protest,

and the destructive

technological

use

of

the

powers

of

nature

is

symboli

cally staged

as an

act

of

human

self-destruction. This

most

expensive

assisted suicide in history represents, however, not a purely fatalistic

conclusion

to

the

novel.36

As

a

symptom

of the

death

culture in

which

Gregor

ha

Documents

Hubert Zapf - Literary Ecology and the Ethics of Texts